


As Night And Day

by AnonymousPumpkin



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: (in a vague never-explained-at-all way), But She Loves Her GF, Deaf Character, F/F, Fluff, I can't believe that wasn't already a relationship, Is this the only fic in the f!Aeducan/f!Brosca tag, It's literally just sweet gay fluff, Lazy Mornings, Multiple Wardens, Nat Does Not Like The Sun, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8007664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousPumpkin/pseuds/AnonymousPumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brown and calloused hands gripped the edge of satin sheets and jerked them roughly up to cover her grimacing, freckled face. Small, crooked feet jerked away from the cold air that wafted in through the open tent door, and she buried her face back in the soft pillow. She burrowed in deep. If she could just dig in deep enough, she rationalized, Lidy would lose interest and she could go back to sleep.</p><p>A short bit of fluff starring my super gay wardens and their wildly different opinions on how great the sun is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Night And Day

**Author's Note:**

> It's 11 o'clock at night and you're gonna take my gay dwarf wardens and _you're gonna like it_.
> 
> I've seriously shipped Nat and Lidy since I made them. Like. Lidy is a princess. Nat is a duster. Nat is mute. Lidy is deaf. Nat is a sarcastic, grumpy rogue who just so happens to actually be a warrior. Lidy is also a rogue, but she's the sweet kind that'll charm you out of all your coin and possibly also your pants. Lidy thinks the surface is amazing and beautiful and bright and wonderful. Nat does Not™. They're a match made in heaven.
> 
> This is the first thing I've written for them in the year since I gave into the knowledge that they were definitely married, and that is absolutely criminal.

The door of the tent lifted, letting in the soft light of the rising sun. The princess leaned in through the open portal, dark brown eyes seeking the figure that slept fitfully within. The wind blew gently, as if it knew just how to ruffle her hair to make her look lightly tousled and adorable, rather than unkempt and tired. The gold-and-pink rays of the rising sun enveloped her small form, making her glow like an ethereal being from an old legend…the kind with dashing heroes and impossible odds and happy endings not always guaranteed. She would be cast as the princess, of course, though not the kind who was docile and passive and allowed herself to be rescued. She was the one who picked up the fallen knight’s sword and slayed the beast herself.

Nat knew all this without even lifting her head from the pillow. She didn’t need to look to know that Lidy looked positively angelic. She’d been woken up at sunrise enough times to know what was looking down at her from the mouth of the tent. Damned beautiful princess and their damned beautiful selves.

Said princess reached out with her foot, nudging the pile of blankets Nat inhabited with one delicate toe. When that garnered no reaction beyond a nonthreatening grunt, she bent down and tugged one corner until she revealed the other woman who was still sleeping—or, rather, trying to. She laughed soundlessly in triumph, and kept pulling until the blankets fell away from Nat’s face and bare shoulders, peppered with freckles and fading bruises and bright hickeys.

Nat looked nothing like Lidy, not in the morning, not in the evening, nor at any point in time, really. Her skin was dark and pocked with freckles and acne scars (and _other_ scars), and everything about her looked rough. Her hair, still uneven from being cut for years with a knife, was wild and unkempt, sticking up and around from her restless sleep. In the afore-mentioned fairy tale, she would be the untrustworthy rogue, who accosted the hero in some dark alley and stole his coin and magic brooch. In longer epics, she might have some kind of redemption arc, but never once did she think she would end up in the princess’s bed. Being woken up at hours the Paragons themselves wouldn’t even keep.

Brown and calloused hands gripped the edge of satin sheets and jerked them roughly up to cover her grimacing, freckled face. Small, crooked feet jerked away from the cold air that wafted in through the open tent door, and she buried her face back in the soft pillow that still smelled faintly of lavender, even after all these months. She wondered vaguely if they were stuffed with flowers. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were. She breathed in deeply and burrowed in deep. If she could just dig in deep enough, she rationalized, Lidy would lose interest and she could go back to sleep.

Alas, it was a hollow and short victory.

The blankets tugged and shifted as Lidy stepped over them, reaching out to shake Nat’s shoulder gently. She struggled weakly, just to let Lidy know that she was awake and was just being an ass. She waited until she shifted a little closer and then a hand flashed out, quick and precise, grabbing her arm and tugging roughly until she tumbled down beside her, shrieking in the most dignified and adorable way she could possibly manage, given the circumstances. Which was pretty damned dignified and adorable, quite frankly. It was _disgusting_.

Lidy kept so many blankets and pillows and bedrolls that her (rather short) tumble to the ground was practically painless. She hit the ground with a _thump!_ and another soft squeal. Her face screwed up into an unhappy grimace not unlike that of a child being denied a toy, though it melted away when Nat emerged from her fortress of blankets to kiss her nose.

“You’re so pretty,” she mouthed, and she was sure it was completely unintelligible. She was sure Lidy got the idea.

She did get the idea. She was not placated. She wrinkled her nose in distaste, wiggling around until she found a more comfortable position. “ _Up_!” she said emphatically, while Nat’s arm snaked around her waist. Nat shook her head, untangling her hand from the blankets to repeat the sentiment.

"Down,” she signed. Her vocabulary was a bit limited by the fact that her other hand was currently wrapped up in the hem of Lidy’s shirt, but she got her point across. “Too soon.” She considered saying something more, but there were a limited number of one-handed signs she could come up with on only three minutes of consciousness.

Lidy rolled her eyes, wriggling around to free up her own hands. “The sun rose an hour ago!”

“And?” That was absolutely _no_ reason to get out of bed. If anything, it was the _best_ reason to _stay_ in bed. Unless it looked like rain (which it didn’t) or it was actually sunset and she’d slept all day (which she hadn’t), there was no way Nat was getting out of bed to spend hours underneath _that_.

“And you should get up! Eat breakfast with me. We’ll walk by the lake before the others get up.” She reached out and touched Nat’s cheek gently, stroking the fading bruise beneath her eye with fingertips that had long lost their aristocratic softness. Somehow she knew just the right amount of pressure, so Nat could feel the softness of her touch and none of the ache of the wound itself. “Please?” she said carefully, lips uncertain around the syllables. Her head hit the pillow, and Nat was momentarily distracted by the way her hair fell across the pillow. There was a single ray of sunlight trespassing through the tent flap, and of course it happened to land on that splash of golden hair, illuminating it like one of Wynne’s healing spells, warm and safe and beautiful. The only good thing about sunlight, Nat had long since decided, was how perfectly it suited Lidy. There were sketches, stashed deep in her belongings, where she tried to capture the beauty of that simple sight, the way it framed and cradled her, not so much adding to her beauty as accentuating what was already there. She never did it justice.

She reached out and stroked the locks gently. They were so soft and fine, not at all like her own thick hair, though they were nearly the same color. The sunlight warmed her fingers. She wondered, if she’d had access to all the soaps and oils Lidy had growing up, her hair would be as soft. Likely not.

Lidy sniffed and drew her attention back to the present. She had adopted her ‘displeased-princess’ face, the one Gorim had warned Nat about when they’d met in the Denerim market.

 _She could charm a bronto,_ he’d told her, _though she’ll just as likely glare it into submission._

Nat was the bronto in this hypothetical situation, and she was trying her darnedest to resist.

"Yes?” she signed cheekily, and Lidy narrowed her eyes.

“Get up,” she commanded. As an afterthought, “Please.”

Nat frowned. She tried to think of a one-hand word emphatic enough to convey the complete and utter distaste she had for the notion of her getting out of bed right now. She’d been on the surface for nearly a year now and she still couldn’t get used to the idea of _the sun_ and she _definitely_ couldn’t fathom why Lidy found the thing so damned _interesting_. It was bright and hot and if you looked at it, it _burned_. The only good thing about the sun, she had decided (aside from its association with Lidy, of course), was when it set. She was also rather fond of the idea that she didn’t have to get up ridiculously early in the morning just _because_. The Blight wasn’t going to get any worse just because she’d decided to spend a few more hours in bed.

Of course, she couldn’t really say that with one hand, and her other was too comfortable against Lidy’s hip.

“Nope,” she settled for saying instead. She pulled Lidy closer, snuggling as close as she could given how tangled up she was in blankets.

Lidy wrinkled her nose again. “Your breath smells bad,” she said snidely, but made no move to get away when Nat leaned in to kiss her again. She didn’t open her mouth, and she probably held her breath, but she didn’t pull away.

Nat raised her eyebrows. _Yours does too, princess_. She didn’t say anything though, shifting around so that she was laying on her stomach, face still turned to Lidy. She couldn’t talk this way, but she didn’t really have much to say anyway. Lidy knew she wasn’t going to get her out of bed, just like she knew Lidy wasn’t going to give up until she was out of bed. They were an unstoppable force and an unmovable object, and every morning they clashed. It was not always as pretty and poetic and picturesque as this morning, but it was quite possibly the most romantic thing they did. In Nat’s personal and extremely biased opinion.

They stared each other down for quite a few minutes, though there was nothing fierce about it. It was actually less of a battle of wills and more of a two-way, very very lazy seduction that, unfortunately, one of them had been set up from the beginning to lose. Nat felt herself drifting further and further away from full consciousness, lulled by the soft rhythm of Lidy’s breath and the comforting warmth of her body.

She heard a sigh and started awake when Lidy started to move away, only to relax when she saw her lover kicking off her boots. She kicked them gracefully to the furthest corner of the tent, huffing and puffing as she removed her shirt and pulled roughly at the blankets. Nat tolerated the rush of cold air only because it was almost immediately replaced by Lidy’s body against hers. She let the blankets fall around them slowly, the way Lidy liked them to, and she let herself be pulled to Lidy’s collar, the way Lidy liked them to rest, and she kept her cold feet to herself, the way Lidy liked her to. And they held each other and, at least for a little while, they went back to sleep. Just the way Nat liked.

She buried her face in Lidy’s shoulders, losing herself in the scent of her skin and her perfume, letting herself be enveloped by her arms and the blankets and the warmth of the day. If you’d told her a year ago that she would be out of Dust Town, on the _surface_ with the _princess_ , lying together as if they were made for one another, and that she’d actually _want_ all that, she would have called you cracked and run for the tunnels. She wasn’t _happy_ where she had been, but she knew her lot in life, and she knew she was luckier than most. She would have cut her own leg off rather than risk what tenuous stability she had. And yet here she was. Displaced. Homeless. But she had a purpose. She had value. She had worth. And she had Lidy. There was nothing— _nothing_ about her life now that she would trade away.

Lidy shifted and the intruding beam of sunlight fell directly on Nat’s face, piercing her eyes like a spear. She grimaced into Lidy’s collar and cracked opened one eye, glaring at the offensive ball of light through her eyelashes. She carefully withdrew her hand from the blankets, gently so as not to disturb Lidy, and made the rudest gesture she could think of in the vague direction of the sky.

 _Almost_ nothing.


End file.
